Minnesota data centers: what the public record shows.

These notes name selected records, say which kinds of public evidence were checked and show what remains missing. They do not add anything to the published counts.

• economic development incentives — Partly checked
  • No Minnesota certification list, programme report or incentive award document was obtained, so no Minnesota research lead carries an incentive record.
  • The bot wall was not bypassed, by rule; all three mn.gov attempts are recorded as failures.
  • The 2025 statutory changes to the Minnesota exemption, which the Illinois report describes as adding green certifications, increasing water permitting and terminating the electricity exemption, were not checked against a Minnesota source.

  Selected records

  • Governor Walz Announces Meta Will Build New Data Center in Rosemount (press release page) · Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development
• utility commission large load — Partly checked
  • No Minnesota docket document was read, so no docket number, electric service agreement or large-load tariff appears in the current research record.
  • No Minnesota research lead carries a utility request megawatt figure.
  • Great River Energy, Dakota Electric and municipal utility filings were not searched.

  Selected records

  • eFiling and eDockets home · Minnesota Public Utilities Commission and Minnesota Department of Commerce
• environmental construction permits — Partly checked
  • The air permit applications dashboard is a Tableau view and was not queried, so no Minnesota air permit application number was obtained.
  • No water appropriation permit, NPDES permit or wetland permit was searched, even though the dataset records Minnesota water-permitting changes for data centres.
  • No Minnesota generator fleet is documented anywhere in the current research record.

  Selected records

  • Air permits · Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
  • Air permit applications received (interactive dashboard) · Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
  • MPCA public notices and data centre pages · Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
• municipal planning assessor gis — Partly checked
  • Six of the seven Minnesota municipalities with active data centre cases were unreachable, so the plat, planned unit development, development contract, rezoning and denial records behind five Minnesota lifecycle statuses were never read.
  • No Minnesota county assessor or GIS portal was queried; no parcel identifier appears anywhere in the current research record.
  • The Glencoe rezoning the dataset dates to 6 November 2025 falls between the two council meetings the city's index lists, and could not be located.

  Selected records

  • Data Center - Farmington Technology Park · City of Farmington, Minnesota
  • City of Rosemount data centre project page · City of Rosemount, Minnesota
  • Council Agenda and Minutes index · City of Glencoe, Minnesota
• tax abatement development agreements — Partly checked
  • No Minnesota development agreement, tax abatement, tax increment financing instrument or certification was retrieved.
  • Whether the Farmington development contract remains in force after the litigation the dataset mentions is unknown.
• operator disclosures — Partly checked
  • No colocation operator page was opened for Minnesota, so the DataBank, Centersquare, Flexential, LightEdge, CENTRA, H5, Lumen, Vaultas and AAIM records rest on the dataset alone.
  • Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Tract location pages were not yet reviewed directly for Minnesota.
  • the current review did not include a broad discovery sweep for Minnesota, so operator pages could only be reached by guessing URLs or by following links already held.

  Selected records

  • Hello, Rosemount! · Meta
• open datasets directories — Checked
  • No unlicensed directory was consulted, so no independent count of Minnesota colocation facilities was attempted.
  • Because almost nothing else was reachable, 25 of the 26 Minnesota research leads cite only this one dataset, which is a single point of failure for the statewide review.

  Selected records

  • Compute Atlas state extract for Minnesota (snapshot 71df145) · Compute Atlas
• historical closures withdrawals names — Partly checked
  • Every one of these reversals rests on the dataset; no Minnesota city denial, withdrawal letter or council minute was retrieved to confirm any of them.
  • The dataset records that Google abandoned a $600 million Becker project in 2022 but holds no record for it, so that closure is noted and not carried as a research lead.
  • No closed or demolished Minnesota data centre was searched for.

  Selected records

  • Compute Atlas state extract for Minnesota, cancelled and withdrawn records (snapshot 71df145) · Compute Atlas
• news and other discovery — Partly checked
  • the current review did not include a broad discovery sweep before Minnesota, so no keyword news sweep of Minnesota was possible and the Star Tribune, Sun Thisweek and other local coverage the dataset cites was not read.

  Selected records

  • Xcel Energy to power new Google data center in Minnesota · Xcel Energy